On the foreign policy front, the biggest development of 2011 was not the European crisis, which could still lead to a breakup of the common currency. It was not even the Arab spring. It was the development of the new American way of war, the unaccountable, secret, shadow operation being undertaken throughout the world in the name of fighting terrorism. Of all the “Nixon goes to China” moments the Obama Administration could have pursued, they actually followed through on this one, and it has had the intended effect. By engaging in a more aggressive covert war strategy than his predecessor, Obama has pushed to the right of Republicans while muting criticism from Democrats who don’t want to give their party leader a hard time, as long as there are no terrorist attacks.

Greg Miller reports on the signature element of this new American way of war, the unending drone strikes against Administration-designated enemies.

In the space of three years, the administration has built an extensive apparatus for using drones to carry out targeted killings of suspected terrorists and stealth surveillance of other adversaries. The apparatus involves dozens of secret facilities, including two operational hubs on the East Coast, virtual Air Force­ ­cockpits in the Southwest and clandestine bases in at least six countries on two continents.

Other commanders in chief have presided over wars with far higher casualty counts. But no president has ever relied so extensively on the secret killing of individuals to advance the nation’s security goals.

The rapid expansion of the drone program has blurred long-standing boundaries between the CIA and the military. Lethal operations are increasingly assembled a la carte, piecing together personnel and equipment in ways that allow the White House to toggle between separate legal authorities that govern the use of lethal force.

In Yemen, for instance, the CIA and the military’s Joint Special Operations Command pursue the same adversary with nearly identical aircraft. But they alternate taking the lead on strikes to exploit their separate authorities, and they maintain separate kill lists that overlap but don’t match. CIA and military strikes this fall killed three U.S. citizens, two of whom were suspected al-Qaeda operatives.

This is a very good story that highlights an almost criminal gap in our national conversation. We simply do not wrestle with the fact that this Administration has asserted a right to kill from a robot plane in the sky anyone they designate as a terrorist, without restrictions or checks on that authority. What’s more, they have put in place the infrastructure to carry out this alleged right, and once governments put in place that infrastructure, they usually feel obligated to use it.

What’s more, this secret war completely blurs the lines between the covert operations of the military and the covert operations of the CIA, as Miller discusses. The Pentagon becomes an impossibly large front organization for the real war games hiding in the shadows, without oversight, without publication.

Countries have begun to resist these programs. Pakistan kicked out the CIA drone program recently, leading to the Christmas drone truce. In Yemen, the strikes continue, but if elections yield a popular government, the same dynamic could result. The Administration relishes the thought of instituting a drone program in Somalia because they would have no government to deal with in approving it.

The drone program is an official secret in Washington, which conveniently resists open discussion about it. But we should have a conversation about the implications of an asserted right to kill anyone, including US citizens, from the sky without due process, at the whim of a star chamber of national security officials, without the input of any more accountable organization. It’s impossible not to acknowledge the slippery slope potential here. The alleged benefits of taking out Al Qaeda operatives pale in comparison to the possibility of a future with robot executioners displaying extreme prejudice on anyone a rogue CIA officer feels like silencing. It doesn’t matter whether this President’s intentions for the drone program are “circumscribed,” as senior officials claim in the piece. It matters whether the precedent is set.

UPDATE: A lonely voice:

The only member of Obama’s team known to have formally raised objections to the expanding drone campaign is Dennis Blair, who served as director of national intelligence.

During a National Security Council meeting in November 2009, Blair sought to override the agenda and force a debate on the use of drones, according to two participants.

Dennis Blair doesn’t work in the Administration anymore. He was fired.

Congress exercises oversight on the Executive, and from the legislation passed by the House especially, but especially that coming out of conference, Obama is just way to pacifist and not fully authoritarian enough in using military power everywhere in the world.

The Congress writes the laws and oversees the Executive in upholding the laws of Congress. Unless you reject the principles of Justice Holmes who argued the People have the right to pretty much any laws they want as long as the laws are applied equally. The people have clearly elected a significant majority to Congress who want lots of people imprisoned and executed on flimsy reasons no matter their citizenship, and no matter where they are. It is the responsibility of the Executive to do the People’s bidding as Congress expresses the wishes of the People.

No one, not judges or the Executive, should question the will of the People as expressed by their representatives in Congress – we are ruled by the laws we create through our representatives in Congress, and if you don’t like those laws, then the solution is not a dictator overriding the People’s will, but making sure the People are better informed about the consequences and the way their representatives interpret their mandate of election to Congress.

By the way, Congress has not taxed anyone to carry these things out. Most of the members of Congress who call Obama “soft” for not exercising greater force and coercion have refused to tax to pay for their policies according to their first enumerated power, and have instead stated or acted as if the debts should not be honored in violation of their second enumerated power.

This gutless poser claims, as his one achievement, that he stood up to Osama — and remotely had him assassinated.

But this gutless (and complicit) pawn of Empire never had the guts, on coming into office like FDR, to challenge the disguised global corporate/financial/militarist EMPIRE that was killing our country right under his nose — mainly because the Empire ‘owns him’.

In point of fact the two-party ‘Vichy Empire’ that placed this pawn in the office of faux-Emperor/president (after their previous stooge Bush got rolled) that camouflaged corporate/financial/militarist Empire, is the singular and ‘causal’ cancerous tumor that causes all of the ‘symptom problems’ like; increasing foreign imperialist oil wars, Wall Street ‘looting’, vast economic inequality, domestic spying, lying, and police-state tyranny, environmental destruction, and all the other issues that Occupy Empire bravely protests.

DN had reports yesterday that drone technology is now miniaturized, and local police are purchasing drones for use in our communities. Of course, our corporate citizen overlords will also be able to purchase and use little drones domestically. Why is it that anyone still thinks the USA is great?

The Administration relishes the thought of instituting a drone program in Somalia because they would have no government to deal with in approving it.

Using million dollar drones to get rebels leaders who ok may talk to Al Queida but are at best armed with machine guns a few rocket launchers and some plastic explosives seems a rather expensive way to do a job.
Drones and torture never got Ossama in 10 years of trying I suspect Obama and friends are invested in drone companies.

So drones will what fly over Chicago and look for guys in hats and winter coats or maybe just hoodies when the weather is warmer? They will rush to a scene and try and find 1 trans am on the expressway? Or maybe they will tell the local police where all the crack heads are because the local police don’t already know? Bwahahaha!
Pork Barrel project!

And instead of sewing a yellow star on your clothes, you will have to apply ($2000 annual fee) to your local police station for an electronic device that designates you as some one who should not be murdered by a drone. Of course, these devices will be hackable, so they will by no means insure your life.

The Administration relishes the thought of instituting a drone program in Somalia because they would have no government to deal with in approving it.

The US has been using Somalia for drone target practice from at least as early as October 9, 2011 up until Dec 2, 2011. Somali lives have been wasted in a grotesque experiment. During that period there were almost daily strikes, with two or three strikes per day some days, all of them killing and injuring people. PruningShears recorded the links to the reports on PressTV, and I filled in more detail
here.

There have been no strikes on Somalia recorded since Dec. 2, about the time the Iranians announced their capture of a US drone on December 4. But I suspect the strikes will resume. It is too easy to kill Somalis this way, with no one to complain, and no consequences except to Somalis. It is an opportunity the drone warriors cannot pass up.

Additionally, people have been promised a career path in drone warfare:

… In 2005, the agency had created a career track in targeting for the drone programme for analysts in the intelligence directorate, the Sep. 2 Post article revealed.

That decision meant that analysts who chose to specialise in targeting for CIA drone operations were promised that they could stay within that specialty and get promotions throughout their careers. Thus the agency had made far-reaching commitments to its own staff in the expectation that the drone war would grow far beyond the three strikes a year and that it would continue indefinitely.

By 2007, the agency realised that, in order to keep those commitments, it had to get the White House to change the rules by relaxing existing restrictions on drone strikes.

Not that Obama isn’t a serial murderer, but I have (pardon the pun) grave doubts that he actually executed Bin Laden, whose death was first reported in 2001. The wealth of manufactured “evidence” the government put out in support of the official story (A Gallery of Fake Dead Bin Ladens) makes me wonder, particularly as the White House has already admitted to digitally erasing Hillary from the footage of Obama watching the “attack” to satisfy anti-feminists abroad. Falsus in unus, falsus in omnes and all that.

(And yes, I know WRH has a disputed reputation, but this seemed fairly well-documented, IMO.)

BTW, there was a piece in the Los Angeles Times about a month or two ago (by Doyle McManus? I forget) where an analysis of the effects of assassinations in Iraq/Afghanistan found that IEDs increased in the area where a “target” was eliminated, because the replacement wanted to prove his commitment to the fight.

Great, so we not only elected a serial killer, but a stupid one at that. Well, maybe he’ll accidentally drone himself, then.